Guitar Lessons: Sweep Picking

In this next video I demonstrate sweep picking (and further on, something called “sweep tapping”), on an acoustic guitar. Now, sweep picking as a technique doesn’t have to be performed on an acoustic- you may also want to try in on an electric guitar (as, often, heavy metal bands do). Whichever kind of guitar you choose, you must remember that it’s proper co-ordination that’s the most important part of this technique; You should work on developing this first- at slow speeds.

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Start Slowly

As I say in the first sweep picking exercise from the “Exercise” section, it’s best to start with smaller shapes and play them very slowly to a metronome. When you can play the two and three string shapes perfectly at, say 40 to 50 bpm then you can increase the tempo (by maybe 5bpm).

I’m not joking when I say that increasing by 10bpm at a time is too much- no matter how good you think you are! The whole point of taking it slowly is to get it perfect. If you increase the speed by 5bpm at a time, you probably won’t even notice the speed increase, but step by step you’ll be taking that perfect (but slow) sweep up to almost unbelievable speeds. All the time you’ll be stepping up the speed and hardly even noticing it.

Patience makes Perfect

I’m often surprised by how many people forget this aspect of guitar practice. There is no “secret” to becoming a master of guitar, just practice, determination, and patience (of course, subscribing to a blog with such good advice is also recommended ). It’s only when you can play something perfectly at a slow speed that you’ll be able to play it perfectly at a fast speed.

…and only then should you even start thinking about progressing to 5 or 6 string sweeps.

Accuracy, patience, determination, and practice- the four key factors of a successful guitar player.

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February 3, 2010 at 8:39 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 1 comment

One Response to “Guitar Lessons: Sweep Picking”

1. Beginner Guitar: 5 Reasons You need to change Your Guitar Strings | Chainsaw Guitar Tuition says:

   24/02/2010 at 4:16 pm

   [...] will use a tonne of force (i.e. a bad idea!) to get the string to co-operate (and you can forget sweep picking!). It will start to take more and more effort to get those bends up to pitch as well, making your [...]